Consensus of Sandomierz (Zgoda Sandomierska, Consensus Sendomiriensis) was a unique document on not only European, but even global scale. The agreement was made at the particular moment, when the Protestant Churches in Europe decidedly separated, and therefore the Consensus soon gained a special significance for Protestant cultures beyond Poland. It was published in print in 1586/87 and 1605 in Palatinate. Thanks to its dissemination, it became the most quoted document in the works of irenic theologians and in various projects on religious agreements in Holy Roman Empire, England, France, and in the Netherlands.

The aim of the project is to investigate the reception of Consensus of Sandomierz in Early Modern Europe. The research will be based on the manuscripts archived in Warsaw, Cracow, Kórnik, and Toruń, as well as Berlin, Herrnhut, Prague, Zurich, and Bethlehem (USA), and on the printed sources (correspondence of the theologians, published historiography, polemics and irenic works).

The analysis of the reception of the Consensus will provide a substantial insight into the field of seventeenth-century irenicism and confessional polemics. I intend to shed a new light on the Early Modern irenicism and to show that the Consensus played a variety of theological, political, and even social roles. It was used by every confession to fulfil its own goals.  Therefore, I claim that the reception of the Consensus was confession-specific, taking a distinct shape for each Protestant denomination involved in the process. Even the theologians, who belonged to the circle of irenicists and intended to reunite the divided churches and confessions, used the Consensus for their own, confessionally motivated purposes. I have named this process as ‘confessional irenicism’.

The Concord of Sandomierz was an agreement among Polish Calvinists, Lutherans, and Bohemian Brothers upon intercommunion and several organizational regulations. At the Synod, the delegates also agreed upon a confession of faith, which was merely a translation into Polish of Heinrich Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession.

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Maciej Ptaszyński is an associate professor at Warsaw University. He studied history and philosophy at universities in Warsaw and Berlin. From 2002 to 2006 he was a graduate student at the DFG Graduate School “Contact Area Mare Balticum: Foreignness and Integration in the Baltic Region” in Greifswald. In 2012–2013 and 2017–2018 he was a visiting professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

He received a doctorate in Warsaw in 2007 with a thesis on the professionalization of the protestant clergy in the Duchy of Pomerania 1560–1618. A monograph based on his doctoral thesis was published in 2011 in Polish, and in 2017 in German as »Beruf und Berufung«. Die evangelische Geistlichkeit und die Konfessionsbildung in den Herzogtümern Pommern, 1560–1618, Göttingen 2017, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

He has also published articles in Polish, German and English on the social history of the Protestant clergy in Pomerania and on the relationship between the clergy and secular authorities. His latest projects concern the Polish reformation and relations between humanism and the reformation in Poland. Recently, he published a history of the Reformation in Poland: Reformacja w Polsce a dziedzictwo Erazma z Rotterdamu, Warszawa 2018, Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. For this book, he received a Prize of the Ministry of Science for the best academic monograph at the book fair in Poznań in 2019.

She graduated with a master’s degree in law and a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Warsaw. She is currently a second-year master’s student in history. In 2023, she began doctoral studies at the University of Warsaw’s Doctoral School of Humanities in the discipline of history. The topic of her dissertation is “Provincial Enlightenment. The Greater Poland Unity of the Bohemian Brethren and Daniel Ernst Jablonski (1699-1741).” Since 2021, she has been a member of the research project The Reception of the Consensus of Sandomierz (1570) in Europe from Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century. The Role of Irenicism in Creating Confessional Cultures. Since 2023, she is also a member of the research project Translating Toleration: Concepts, Texts, and Intermediaries between Poland and Protestant Germany (1645–1795). She is interested in the history of ideas and the history of religion in the early modern era.

Since 2021, a doctoral student at SDNH UW in the field of history, she has been researching the social history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the reign of the Vasa dynasty. She is currently researching the piety of women of the Radziwill family.

In 2018, he graduated bachelor`s degree in history with a thesis about Liber Chamorum of Walerian Nekanda Trepka and the possibilities of illegal promotion to the noble state written under the supervision of Professor Urszula Augustyniak. The subject of his master’s thesis was the Armenian parish and clergy in Zamość in the 17th century. Graduate School of Education of the PAFF and UW. Since October 2020, a doctoral student at SDNH UW, he is preparing his PhD thesis entitled Armenians in private towns of the early-modern Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – family structure, mobility and assimilation processes in the light of metric registration. From 2021, she is a member of the research project ‘Reception of the Sandomierz Concord (1570) in Europe in the 16th-18th centuries. The role of Irenicism in shaping confessional cultures’. He is interested in the early-modern Commonwealth, social history, religion and ethnic minorities and especially Armenians.

• Consensus Sendomiriensis
• Original manuscript in Národní muzeum (Praha), Fragm. 1 E b 1/3, fol. 1r–38v (Iter); fol. 39r–44r (Consensus).
• Bartel, ‘Zgoda Sandomierska na tle dążeń ekumenicznych protestantów polskich i litewskich w XVI–XVIII wieku (w 400-lecie jej powstania)’, Rocznik Teologiczny 12 (1970), p. 13–15
• Barton (hrsg.), Ostmitteleuropas Bekenntnisschriften der evangelischen Kirche A. und H.B. des Reformationszeitalters, vol. 3/1, Budapest 1987, p. 273–279.
• Consensus sive concordia in fide et religione Christiana, s/l 1586.
• Consensus, oder Christliche Vereinigung in Religions und Glaubens Sachen, [Amberg] 1605.
• E. Jabloński, Historia Consensus Sendomiriensis, inter Evangelicos Regni Poloniae, et M.D. Lithuaniae in Synodo Generalis Evangelicorum utriusque partis, Sendomiriae An. MDLXX. Die 14. Aprilis, Berolini 1731, p. 185–195 [= Jabloński, Historia].
• P. Jürgens – K. Daugirdas, ‘Konsens von Sandomierz – Consensus Sendomiriensis, 1570’, in A. Mühling –P. Opitz (hrsg.), Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften, vol. 3/1, Neukirchen-Vluyn 2012, p. 1–20.
• Łukaszewicz, O kościołach Braci czeskich w dawnej Wielkiejpolsce, Poznań 1935.
• A. Niemeyer (ed.), Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesiis Reformatio Publicatarum, Lipsiae 1840, p. 553–561.
• Pareus, Irenicum sive De Unione Et Synodo Evangelicorum Concilianda Liber Votivus, Francoforti – Heidelbergae 1614, p. 120–125.
• Pelikan, ‘The Consensus of Sandomierz: A Chapter from the Polish Reformation’, Concordia Theological Monthly 18 (1947), p. 826–830; repr. in: D. Petkunas, ‘The Consensus of Sandomierz: An Early Attempt to Create a Unified Protestant Church in Sixteenth-Century Poland and Lithuania’, Concordia Theological Quarterly 73 (2009), p. 344–346 [= Pelikan, ‘The Consensus of Sandomierz’].
• Sipayłło, Akta Synodów Różnowierczych w Polsce, 4 vols., Warszawa 1966–1997, vol. 2 (1972), p. 272–295 (Iter), 295–298 (Consensus).
• Smend, Die Synoden der Kirche Augsburgischer Konfession in Großpolen im 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhundert, Posen 1930, p. 61–64 [= Smend, Die Synoden].
• Strimesius, Consensus Sendomiriensis, ab Evangelicis, Augustanae, Bohemicae et Helveticae, Confessionis Sociis olim initus, Francofurti Adviadrum 1704, p. 1–18.

1. Bartel, ‘Zgoda Sandomierska na tle dążeń ekumenicznych protestantów polskich i litewskich w XVI–XVIII wieku (w 400-lecie jej powstania)’, Rocznik Teologiczny 12 (1970), p. 3–30; repr. in German as O. Bartel, ‘Der Consensus Sendomiriensis vom Jahre 1570 im Lichte der ökumenischen Bestrebungen in Polen und Litauen im 16., 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Luther-Jahrbuch 40 (1973), p. 107–128.
2. Bickerich, ‘Zur Geschichte der Auflösung des Sendomirer Vergleichs’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 49 (1930), NF XII, p. 350–381.
3. Bidlo, Jednota bratksá v prvním vzhnanství, 4 vols., Praha 1909, vol. 3, p. 154, 166–173, 184–185.
4. Dworzaczkowa, Bracia czescy w Wielkopolsce w XVI i XVII wieku, Poznań 1997, p. 39–41.
5. Gmiterek, ‘Problemy unifikacji liturgii braci czeskich i kalwinów w Rzeczypospolitej XVI–XVII wieku’, Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sec. F, XL (1985), p. 93–115.
6. Gmiterek, ‘Obóz różnowierczy w Polsce wobec idei colloquium charitativum za Władysława IV’, Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sec. F, XXXV/XXXVI (1980–1981), p. 69–88.
7. Gmiterek, ‘Szymon Teofil Turnowski w obronie zgody sandomierskiej’, Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska, Sec. F, XXXI (1976), p. 13–39.
8. Halecki, Zgoda sandomierska 1570 r., Warszawa 1915.
9. E. Jordt Jørgensen, Ökumenische Bestrebungen unter den polnischen Protestanten bis zum Jahre 1645, København 1942.
10. Lehmann, Konfesja sandomierska na tle innych wyznań, Warszawa 1937.
11. Lukšaitė, Reformacija Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje ir Mažojoje Lietuvoje. XVI a. trečias dešimtmetis – XVII a. pirmas dešimtmetis, Wilno 1999, p. 334–336.
12. Małłek, ‘Sandomir, Consensus von’, in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 36 vols., Berlin – New York 1976–2004, vol. 30 (1999), p. 29–31.
13. G. Müller, ‘Der Consensus Sendomirensis – Geschichte eines Scheiterns? Zur Diskussion über Protestantismus und protestantische Konfessionalisierung in Polen-Litauen im 16. Jahrhundert’, in K. Lambrecht – J. Bahlcke – H.-C. Maner (hrsg.), Konfessionelle Pluralität als Herausforderung. Koexistenz und Konflikt in Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Leipzig 2006, p. 397–408.
14. Petkunas, ‘Consensus of Sendomir: A Unique Ecumenical Document in Sixteenth-Century Polish-Lithuanian Protestant Christianity’, Tiltai/Bridges 9 (2005), p. 181–200.
15. Ptaszyński, Introduction: Searching for Compromise, w: Searching for Compromise? Interreligious Dialogue, Agreements, and Toleration in 16th–18th Century Eastern Europe, ed. Maciej Ptaszynski and Kazimierz Bem, Brill, Leiden 2022, p. 1–31
16. Ptaszyński, Was a Confessional Agreement in Early Modern Europe Possible? On the Role of the Sandomir Consensus in the European Debates, „Religions“ 13, 2022, 994. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13100994
17. Ptaszyński, Andrzej Węgierski (1600–1649): Polnisch-reformierte Geschichtsschreibung im 17. Jahrhundert zwischen Polemik und Irenik, w: Konfessionelle Geschichtsschreibung im Umfeld der Böhmischen Brüder (1500–1800): Traditionen – Akteure – Praktiken, hrsg. von Joachim Bahlcke, Jiří Just, Martin Rothkegel, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2022, p. 323-348
18. Ptaszyński, Der Konsens von Sendomir in der europäischen Irenik, w: Confessio im Konflikt. Religiöse Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung in der Frühen Neuzeit. Ein Studienbuch, hrsg. von Mona Garloff, Christian Volkmar Witt, Göttingen 2019, p. 255–278
19. Völker, ‘Die Unionsgedanken Consensus Sendomiriensis’, Zeitschrift für Osteuropäische Geschichte NF 3 (1933), p. 508–525.
20. Sławiński, Toruński synod generalny 1595 roku. Z dziejów polskiego protestantyzmu w drugiej połowie XVI wieku, Warszawa 2002.
21. Tazbir, ‘Die Religionsgespräche in Polen’, in G. Müller (hrsg.), Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, Gütersloh 1980, p. 127–144.
22. Urban, ‘Consensus Sendomiriensis’, in H. J. Hillerbrand (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, 4 vols., New York 1996, vol. 1, p. 413–414.
23. Wotschke, ‘Erasmus Gliczner’, Aus Posens kirchlicher Vergangenheit 6 (1917/1918), p. 1–73
24. Wotschke (hrsg.), Der Briefwechsel der Schweizer mit den Polen (Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, Ergänzungsband 3), Leipzig 1908.
25. —, ‘Christoph Thretius. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Kampfes der reformierten Kirche gegen den Antitrinitarismus in Polen’, Altpreussische Monatsschrift 44 (1907), p. 1–41, 151–210.
26. P. Wrzecionko, ‘Die Religionsgespräche in Polen unter dem Aspekt ihrer Unionsbestrebungen’, in G. Müller (hrsg.), Die Religionsgespräche der Reformationszeit, Gütersloh 1980, p. 145–152.